Give teens credit to make good choices

April 03, 2007

We can all agree that it's a tough job raising children in today's world, especially raising teenagers. As we struggle to find the best way to help our kids grow up to be healthy, responsible adults, it can be helpful to examine our own thinking and assumptions. So let's do just that with one particular issue: underage drinking. One school of thought begins with the assumption that "kids are going to drink"- in other words, teenagers will drink alcohol no matter what we as parents do. According to this line of thinking, it's not realistic to expect our teenagers to avoid alcohol, and so the responsible parent should encourage his or her teen to drink safely. So, for example, we should encourage our children to have designated drivers when they drink. Or, perhaps, we should provide alcohol in our own home, so that our teens can drink in a safe environment. I can understand some of the logic in this way of thinking, but in the end I believe that it's completely wrong-headed. If we analyze it, I think we'll find that the underlying attitude is not so much "realistic" as it is "pessimistic" about our young people. To be clear, when I talk about drinking, I'm not talking about the occasional drink. I'm talking about a lifestyle that is centered on alcohol. I'm talking about the assumption that every weekend (at a minimum), a person needs to consume large amounts of alcohol in order to have a good time. So what's behind that assumption? Is the life of our teens really so painful and meaningless that we assume they have to numb themselves with alcohol in order to survive? Or do we think our teens are so unimaginative and dull that the only way they can have fun is by getting drunk? If so, we are not giving them much credit. Of course, realistically, if a young person really wants to get into an alcohol-centered lifestyle, he or she will find ways to do so. As parents, we can't supervise our teens 100 percent of the time. But there is an essential difference between (1) accepting that some things are beyond our direct control, and (2) actively enabling or supporting a teen's choice to accept that lifestyle. It's that active support that's the problem. As all parents should know, our greatest influence on our children is not in what we say, but in what we do. So we need first to examine our own lifestyles - to what extent is alcohol an essential part of our own relaxing or having fun? To what extent do we model a regular dependence on alcohol? - o, I'm not calling for a ban on alcohol - we tried that during Prohibition, and it failed. Besides, from a Christian point of view, there is nothing intrinsically wrong about drinking alcohol - Jesus himself drank alcohol. From a scientific point of view, studies tell us that a glass of wine a day is healthy. Alcohol itself is not the issue. The issue is our attitude toward life. As parents, we need to communicate to our children a vision of life in which fun and a good time are not dependent on mind-altering drugs, whether alcoholic or not. We as parents need to help our teens find healthy activities - for example, getting involved in sports or creative arts, reading poetry at a coffee house or playing music -and help them avoid getting sucked into a pessimistic view of life in which escape through alcohol is the highlight of the week. Another drawback to the "realistic" approach to underage drinking is that it teaches our young people to disrespect the law. If parents, or if teens themselves, really believe that they can drink responsibly at age 18, then by all means they should work openly to change the law. But just ignoring a law we don't happen to like is not the answer. So let's give our young people a little more credit. With proper guidance and support, I think they are more than up to the challenge of rejecting the pessimistic, alcohol-centered view of life. But perhaps the real question is whether we parents are up to that same challenge. Martin Albl teaches religious studies at Presentation College. His column appears occasionally in the American News. Write to him at the American News, P.O. Box 4430, Aberdeen, SD 57402, or e-mail americannews@aberdeennews.com.